Her knuckles grazed his collarbone. He was eye level with her breasts. The room suddenly seemed as small as a phone booth.
Fourcade leaned back as she stepped away, as if he may have felt it, too-the strange magnetic pull. He pulled the T-shirt off his arms and threw it on the tile floor. His chest was wide and hard-looking, covered with a mat of dark hair that trailed down the center of a six-pack of stomach muscles and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.
Annie swallowed hard and moved to the sink.
"I'm waiting for that explanation," she said. She waited another few minutes while she filled the sink with warm water and soaked a washcloth.
"I went to see Marcotte. A friend of his took exception to my visit."
"Gosh, imagine that." She dabbed gingerly at the blood that had crusted along a cut on his cheekbone. "I'm sure you were your usual charming self-spouting paranoid delusions, accusing him of being the devil. What were you doing there in the first place? Did you find something in Donnie's phone records?"
"No, but I don't like Marcotte's smell hanging around this. I wanted to rattle his cage."
"And you got your bell rung, instead. Careless."
It was. He had said so himself countless times on the endless drive home. He was rusty, and beyond that, he didn't think straight when it came to Marcotte.
"So who were these 'friends'?"
"A couple of knee busters belonging to Vic DiMonti."
"Vic DiMonti. The wiseguy Vic DiMonti?"
"C'est vrai. You got it in one, angel. Didn't think a fine upstanding citizen like Marcotte would know anyone like that, did you? Well, you'll never see them on the society page together, that's for damn sure."
He took a sip of the whiskey while she rinsed the blood out of the washcloth. The liquor stung the inside of his mouth where his teeth had cut into the soft tissue. It hit his empty stomach with an acidic hiss that was followed closely by a warm, numbing glow. He took another drink.
"This should have stitches," Annie muttered, staring at the cut that sliced his left eyebrow.
She'd thought he was insane when he'd first brought up the subject of Marcotte. She'd thought Marcotte was just part of the baggage of his past that he dragged around behind him and wouldn't let anyone see inside of. But if Marcotte was Donnie's secret buyer, and if Marcotte consorted with mob types… maybe Fourcade wasn't so crazy after all.
"So what did Marcotte have to say?"
"Nothing. I didn't like the quality of his silence."
"But if Donnie wasn't in contact with him before the murder, then he's not a motive. What Donnie does with his half of the company now is his own business."
He took hold of her wrist and pulled her hand away from his split chin. "The devil comes knocking at your door, 'Toinette, don'tcha turn your back on him just 'cause he's late for the first dance."
Annie's breath caught at the leashed strength in his grip, at the dark fire in his eyes. This was what she had warned herself away from-his intensity, his obsessions.
"I'm in this to close the homicide," she said. "Marcotte is your demon, not mine. I don't even know what he did to win that exalted place in your heart."
She had just finished telling herself she didn't want to know, and yet she found herself holding her breath as she waited for the explanation.
"If we're partners…" she whispered.
The silence, the moment, took on a strange density, as clear and thick as water. The air of expectation: too heavy to breathe, charged with electricity. The weight of it was more than he wanted, the import beyond what he would have allowed himself to consider. He wondered if she felt it, if she could recognize it for what it was. Then he took a deep breath and stepped off that inner ledge.
"I went looking for justice," he said softly. "Marcotte bent it over my head like a tire iron. He showed me a side to the system as tangled and oily as the innards of a snake."
"You think Marcotte killed that hooker?"
"Oh, no." He shook his head slightly. "Allan Zander killed Candi Parmantel. Marcotte, he made it all go away- and my career along with it."
"Why would he do that?"
"Zander is married to a cousin of Marcotte. He's nobody, no social climber, just another jerk-off white-collar working stiff. Frustrated with his job, disappointed in his marriage, looking to take it all out on somebody. He left that girl, that fourteen-year-old runaway who was selling her body so she could eat, dead in a back-alley Dumpster like she was so much refuse. And Duval Marcotte covered it up."
"You know this?" Annie asked carefully. "Or you think it?"
"I know. I can't prove it. I tried, and everything I tried turned back around on me. I wasn't the one who tampered with the evidence or lost the lab work."
"Nobody else thought it was strange-all this stuff going wrong on one case?"
"Nobody cared. What's another dead hooker besides bad press? Besides, it didn't any of it look that big. A bad test here, a piece of evidence gone there. You know what they say: New Orleans is a marvelous place for coincidence."
"But you weren't the only detective on the case. What about your partner?"
"He had a kid with leukemia. Big-time medical bills. Who do you think he cared more about-his child or some dead prostitute? I was the only player in the game who gave a damn about that girl. I didn't want Marcotte's money, I wanted Marcotte, and most of all I wanted Zander. Marcotte snapped me like a twig, and I couldn't prove a goddamn thing. The more noise I made, the crazier I looked. The chief wanted my ass on a platter. The captain wanted me out on a psych charge. My lieutenant stuck his neck out and let me resign. I hear he's working security for some oil company in Houston now."
Wincing, he leaned over and dug his cigarettes and lighter out of his discarded jacket. He shook one out and lit up.
"Duval Marcotte, he does something like that for a little nothing/nobody turd like Zander, what you think he'd do for someone like Vic DiMonti?"
Annie sat down on the edge of the tub and stared at her hands. Fourcade wasn't telling her he had crashed and burned in a big way. The rumors that had filtered out of New Orleans on the blue grapevine had whispered words like crazy, paranoid, drunk, violent. She thought of what he had said that night at Laveau's.
"You afraid of me?… You don't listen to gossip?"
"I take it for what it's worth. Half-truths, if that."
"And how do you decide which half is true?"
"Do you believe me, 'Toinette?" he asked.
For a moment the only sound was the insect buzz of the fluorescent lights that flanked the medicine chest. It had been a long time since he'd cared if anyone believed him- not facts and evidence, him. He had put away that need, but now he felt the strange stirrings of hope in his chest, foreign fingers touching him in a way that was intrusive and seductive, and ultimately disturbing.
"It doesn't matter," he said, stubbing his cigarette out on the rim of the sink.
"Yes, it does," Annie corrected him. "Of course it does." She raked a hand back through her hair and exhaled. "It must have been hell. I can't- No, I can imagine… a little bit. I've been learning lately about standing on the wrong side of an issue."
"And I put you there, didn't I, chère?" He reached out to touch her chin. His smile was bitter and sad. "What a helluva team we make, huh?"
She tried a smile to match his. "Yeah. Who'd believe it?"
"No one. But it's right, you know. We want the same thing… need the same thing…"
His voice died to a whisper as he realized the conversation had shifted onto a new plane, that what was between them was attraction; that what he needed, what he wanted, was Annie. And she knew it. He could see it in her eyes- the surprise, apprehension, anticipation.